Environmental Law Clinic Successes
Founded in 1978, the Getches-Green Natural Resources, Energy, and Environmental Law Clinic is one of the country's first environmental law clinics. Students in the clinic engage in litigation and related advocacy efforts, most commonly on behalf of national or local environmental groups. Clinic students draft pleadings and briefs, counsel their clients, develop case theories and legal strategies, participate in settlement negotiations, and, occasionally, present oral arguments in federal court. Read more about what the clinic has been up to this past year below.
Recent Successes
The clinic represented a community organization in southwest Oregon in a challenge to BLM’s program for vegetation management in the region. Students brought claims under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. A student team drafted a motion for summary judgment last fall, and a response brief in the spring. A student argued a case in federal court last April. We received a partially-favorable decision in May, and now wait for that decision to be adopted by an Article III judge. Read more here.
A team of clinic students worked with the Getches-Wilkinson Center to research and draft an amicus brief on behalf of legal scholars in Utah’s and individual plaintiffs’ challenges to the restoration of Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monuments. That collaboration served as a launchpad for renewing the past practice of hosting 10th Circuit oral arguments here at the law school. In September, the case was argued at Colorado Law, along with 4 other appeals. Learn more about the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals oral arguments.
Clinic students represented a client in a rulemaking proceeding held by the Energy and Carbon Management Commission. The proposed rules dealt with “cumulative impacts” from the industry, and were aimed at a category of pollution that can disproportionately impact lower-income communities and communities of color who are often already overburdened with pollution. A team of two students appeared before the Commission and presented the client’s suggested changes to the rules.
Current Happenings
Clinic students are currently working with a community group in their engagement with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment and Xcel over Xcel’s planned remediation of groundwater and coal ash landfills at the Valmont Station.
Clinic students are advising a neighborhood organization concerned about a proposed oil and gas development in their community. The team supported the client in preparation for a local public hearing and the hearing on the permit application.
Clinic students are working with a client interested in improving their state’s wildlife and endangered species laws. The students researched other states’ laws and assessed the current law to recommend potential improvements.
Clinic students are representing a regional environmental organization as an opposer in a water law proceeding. The students participated in a negotiation session with the applicant, and will be engaged in other litigation activities as the case proceeds toward trial.